


Bug

by ikilledthepaperclip



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, yup it's a babyfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9178447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikilledthepaperclip/pseuds/ikilledthepaperclip
Summary: In which the Doctor must put pieces together.





	1. Chapter 1

She heard tapping from the bathroom door, which was shortly accompanied by a gruff Scottish voice.

“Clara? You ready?”

Wiping her mouth with a tissue, she cleared her throat. “Coming!”

After brushing her teeth for the third time that morning, Clara Oswald joined the Doctor in her living room, where the TARDIS waited patiently.

“I can always come back next week.” He shrugged, giving her what he hoped was his best impression of indifference, praying his nearly-sentient eyebrows hadn’t betrayed him.

“No, no, it’s just a bug. I’m over it.” She flashed a winsome smile and made for the TARDIS’s doors. “Really. Perfectly fine!”  
  
The Doctor jumped in front of her, arms crossed. As he stood there, cold and unmoving, she couldn’t quite keep the petulance out of her sigh.

“We gonna get in anytime soon?”

“You are sure you’re well?” He peered at her intently, as though if he stared long enough he’d be able to see straight into her organs and find the root of the problem.

“ _Yes_.” She drew out the last sound with all the exasperation she could muster, earning a flash of his eyes and an almost-imperceptible smile. “Now, could we _please_ leave?”

He threw up his hands in mock defeat. “All right, all right. Far be it from me to argue with the Boss Lady.”

Upon entering the ship’s control room, Clara immediately went to work with the console.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to find that place we visited a while back—the one with the yellow grass?”

He reached over the pull the console screen from her hands. “My ship.”

She pulled it back just as quickly. “ _Our_ trip.”

He moved in a blur, and suddenly she saw the screen in his grip once more. “Vegarsilon 12. Started as a research post. Then the wee experiments escaped and went to seed. And you know, I distinctly recall explaining this to someone already.”

After waiting a second for the jab that never came, he stole a sidelong glance at his companion. “Clara? Hello, are you in there? Maybe we should get you back—”

“Hm?” She was running a hand through her hair absently. “Oh, yeah. Science-gone-wild planet.”

She continued to stare off into the distance, prompting the Doctor to lean into her space, trying to see what had so transfixed her. Finding only some stairs and nondescript railing, he shook his head.

“Why the sudden interest in a world we’ve already seen?”

Her voice emerged, dreamlike in its cadence. “I just…wanna see it again. I dunno.”

Something in the tone sent a cold shiver down his spine—a difficult feat for a man whose body temperature rarely breached “early October morning”. He tried to hone in on what it was, apart from a marked departure in her usual demeanor, that troubled him so. Something familiar, yes. Something long, long gone and still so recognizable. Cursing this regeneration’s superfluence of “fuzzy areas”, the Doctor pulled a lever, and waited for the hum of the TARDIS’s engines to quiet.

“Well, we’re here. I do hope you’re truly over that bug; I don’t imagine the fauna would be too keen on—”

He heard the TARDIS’s doors open. She had already left.

 

* * *

 

He found her in the middle of a luminescent yellow field.

“Clara! What in all the worlds are you—you…”

It was then he stopped to look at her. His companion had never looked happier—well, almost never. He swallowed and chased his memories away, watching how the blades of grass curled in serpentine ribbons against her legs. She was sitting, leaning back on her hands, her face tilted up to catch the lunar rays.

He dug his hands in his pockets, feeling suddenly out of place. Bit of ancient swamp algae watching the lotus bloom, that’s what you are. As if sensing his unease, she turned to him, her face full of some infinite kindness.

“Sit with me, Doctor. Isn’t it lovely?”

He thought he heard himself murmur yes as he crouched down next to her.

“Everything about this place, it feels good. It’s so…satisfying.” She was using the sing-songy voice again, and he leaned into her, scanning her face for clues.

“Clara?”

“Mm?” Her eyes snapped into focus on him. She gave a small chuckle. “I know it sounds weird. But I just had to see this.”

For a moment, any beauty in Vegarsilon 12 was lost on him, as he watched her perfect mouth lift into a smile. He reasoned his eyebrows were betraying him now, not conveying nearly the usual amount of crossness.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said softly, placing her hand over his. Small, quick fingers found the space between his thumb and forefinger, and gave a squeeze. If he flinched, it’d been too small to notice. He was still looking at her, eyes darting from her cheeks to her nose to her lips to her pointed chin, as if he could scan the thousand tiny details into a more accurate and lasting composite image.

“Of course I’m here,” he said after a pause, returning to stare out at the landscape. “Where else would I be?”

He made no move to free his hand.

 

* * *

 

The Doctor was getting comfortable—actually, truly, very-rarely-come-by comfortable—when he heard a short _hm_ from the woman next to him.

“’Hm’? What ‘hm’?” He teased, tensing as he felt her sit up straight. “Is the splendor of this most splendid world lost on you already?”

Then he thought he heard her mutter something—but of course, it couldn’t have been correct. Then again, he was rarely incorrect, and it sounded very much like she’d just said, “Spinach.”

“Sorry?”

“Spinach,” she repeated.

“Not here, heavens no. A single leaf could light you up like a firecracker if you so much as tried to take a lick—”

“I want spinach.”

He did a double-take, just to make sure he understood fully. Her face showed only determination now, as if Mission: Spinach were a matter of life and death. _Pieces_ , a small voice whispered in his head. _Pieces from two puzzles, creating the same picture_. He asked the voice to continue, but was met only by silence.

She’d stood up now and was walking back toward the TARDIS. Catching up in a few lanky strides, the Doctor grabbed her wrist and pulled her around to face him.

“What’s gotten into you? First you drag us to this—” He caught the dangerous flash of her eyes. “This, uh, place of inestimable beauty. And now, spinach?”

She took a step toward him, forcing her to tilt her head at a sharp angle to meet his gaze.

“I just want some. Don’t you ever get hankerings? Come on, I’ll even let you fly the TARDIS back,” she joked, poking at one of his buttons with a finger.

“Well, thank you for allowing me the privilege of captaining my own vessel.” He gave his best attempt at sounding the Usual Cross, but underneath he was quite sure she could hear the amusement and worry running at a break-neck pace through his mind.

 

* * *

 

She lounged on the sofa, flicking halfheartedly through TV channels.

“Damn, nothing good on.”

A voice called out from the kitchen. “You’ve just been to a planet inhabited entirely by neon-colored life forms, and you’re complaining the TV’s not interesting enough for you? What happened to revisiting wonderful, just-encoded memories? Or are you catching pudding-brainitis?” He poked his head out the doorway. “And watch the language.”

She gave a huff. “This, in case you’ve forgotten, is my home. I can speak any which way I please. Also, I revisit _recent pleasant memories_ quite often enough, thank you.”

He tried to divert attention from his growing blush with a derisive snort, returning to the stove. “If this is your abode, O Great Hostess, then why am I the one cooking your spinach?”

“You told me you’d do a ‘far superior job of it’, remember? By ‘a factor of one-hundred’, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Oh.” His voice returned softer from the kitchen, unable to disguise his smile. “Well, the numbers don’t lie.”

 

* * *

 

Later, after she’d begged and threatened him sufficiently, the Doctor agreed to sit next to her. A new show was on, and she was pleasantly surprised by the quality, moving her hand to her mouth every few minutes to stifle a laugh.

Halfway through the program, she felt the fabric of his coat sleeve against her arm.

“You don’t have to, you know.” His voice was gentler than usual, and if she had to guess, she might say he was actually trying not to chuckle himself.

“Don’t have to what?” She took the opportunity to angle herself toward him, her cheek inches from his shoulder.

“Do the hand-covery thing. Unless you have geliophobic neighbors; that’s an irrational fear of—”

“I know what it is. I used to have a little book, listed every phobia there was.” She leaned into his shoulder, enjoying immensely the way his scent wafted off the parts her cheek touched. It reminded her of rosemary—she needed barely brush it for the whole plant to come to aromatic life in her hand.

The Doctor was similarly occupied; there was a faint, sweet smell on her skin, in her hair, perfuming the air around her, and the infuriating voices in his head berated him: _You know this_. His brow furrowed. New shampoo? He offered weakly, frustrated by the voices’ subsequent laughter.

“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For today. It was wonderful.”

He hummed his agreement. “Yes, for all the…peculiarities, I’d count it one of our more-relaxing and less-life-threatening things.”

Her laughter echoed through the small room. “Oh, it’s one of them, sure.”

After the program ended, the Doctor stammered around an excuse to leave. She watched him fumble for a full minute, enjoying how sweet and vulnerable it made him look, before deciding to take mercy.

“Yeah, you should head off, then. I’ll see ya around?”

He paused at the TARDIS doors. “Same time next week?”

She looked thoughtful a moment. “You know, it is spring holiday…school’s not back in for another week.”

“Ah!” Excitement leapt off his tongue and he cursed it immediately. “I mean, does that mean—maybe tomorrow you’d like—?”

She smiled that otherworldly, benevolent smile that somehow looked so right on her features, and leaned in and up to place a small kiss on his cheek.

“I’d like that.”

“I—yes, well—very nice. Tomorrow, then.”

He was halfway through the doors when he poked back out, questions in his eyes. “Are you sure I can’t run some tests, just a couple scans—to make sure that bug of yours—”

“I’m _fine_ , Doctor!” She giggled, pushing him back into the TARDIS.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor found himself thanking whoever had implemented these spring holidays, making a mental note to send the responsible individual a fruit basket when he found the time. He and Clara had spent half of the last week travelling—mostly to places she felt inexplicably drawn to revisit. He’d learned to expect cutting the trips short; some infernal hunger always seized her toward the end of the day. It was invariably either spinach or buttered rice.

He had not failed to notice the “little bug” was still wreaking havoc on her digestive system in the mornings. On the third day, when she’d stayed half an hour in the bathroom, he quietly instructed the TARDIS to perform a cursory examination upon her entry. The ship buzzed and gave a tone that sounded suspiciously like the word _no_.

He’d been in his favorite chair, meditating on the events of their fifth day, when he felt it. Like an infinitesimally-small steel thread suddenly wound its way around both his hearts, tugging at him, drawing him to the console, then the TARDIS’s doors. _Clara_. He knew, he could sense it—something was afflicting his Clara.

Coordinates set, he bolted through the doors and into her bedroom. Soft moonlight was filtering in through the window above her bed—and there she was, curled like a cat under a number of blankets. She was shivering.

“Clara? Are you all right?”

He sat next to her trembling, blanket-covered form, reaching to brush the top of her head—the only part of her visible above the fabric—with a cool hand. After a moment, the covers drew down to her chin, and she peeked out at him.

“I’m s-so cold, Doctor. What’s wrong with me?”

Her eyes were wide and he would have called them feverish had he not first felt her forehead. He almost recoiled at the shock of it: she _was_ cold. Very cold indeed, if he could tell. Conflicting theories wrestled in his mind. Such temperatures should not be possible for a living human—she ought to be dead. He could’ve decked his mental construct for even suggesting such a thing. _But she is not dead_ , came another voice. _Which means whatever is chilling her is also keeping her alive_. The voices went suddenly quiet then, leaving the Doctor to his revelation. He understood—or, at least, he thought he understood. It was bordering on the preposterous, the fantastical, the impossible truth. There was nothing to do but take his companion into his arms then, cradling her to his chest as she shook.

“Doctor? You’re—you’re warm.” She murmured. “You’re warmer than me.” She lifted her head to look at him. “What does that mean? A-am I…dying?”

The Doctor had grown very still, staring straight ahead into the darkness of her room, his mind going a light-year a minute, trying to sort out the information and find words for her in the meanwhile. She deserved to know.

“Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara...” He trailed off, catching on her name like a mantra, some ancient word of power. He inhaled, praying it would give him strength.

“I don’t know how—besides, of course, the obvious _how_ , which still doesn’t explain the _how_ how. But it’s—” He shook his head, trying to look past her large, moon-filled eyes and failing miserably.

“Clara, you’re cold because something cold is growing within you. It’s—there’ve been signs. Two whole worlds worth of signs. I just didn’t know how to piece them together until now.”

“Until now?” Behind her fear he thought he caught the faintest glimmer of apprehension.

“My kind, we’re—space is cold. And we belong out there, to space.” He gestured to somewhere above her ceiling with an arm, the other still wrapped tight behind her shoulder, hooking around her waist. “So we are cold. Colder…ish. And when we first start out…”

A hand had crept out from underneath the comforter, coming to lie across his chest, her fingers tracing slow circles around his shirt buttons.

“When you start out…” She offered for him.

He exhaled. “When we first start out, we’re like little patches of that frigid darkness. This is a special time in—in—”

“In what, Doctor?” She was looking up at him.

“In pregnancy, for Gallifreyan women. It is called, quite accurately, The Tremoring.”

Her voice was very small when she spoke. “Two weeks.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m two weeks late. But I thought we couldn’t—and even if we could, it was supposed to be safe. What did you mean, the ‘ _how_ how’?”

“I meant the biological how. The physiological, genetic mechanisms at play.” The question sat in her gaze. “Clara, all I can give you is speculation.”

“Well, speculate away.”

“I’ve sometimes wondered…if the nature of a Time Lord is reinforced on a microcosmic scale.”

“Go on.”

“What if all the—the parts are just as temporally-attuned and given to adaptation as the organism itself?”

“You mean to tell me you think your ‘little Doctors’ were able to undergo a sort of regeneration, outfitting them with more compatible features, and then…what? They just waited for an egg?”

“Well…” He seemed to be caught mid-shrug. “Waited or maybe…jumped ahead a bit?”

Her eyes gorged on moonlight and grew to cream-filled saucers. “Your swimmers _time-travelled_ to the moment of my ovulation?”

His fingertips beat an erratic rhythm against her waist; if they’d been standing, she was sure they’d have been flailing about.

“Like I said, speculation only.”

It was only when she nestled more closely into his chest he knew he was in the clear, that she didn’t hate him for what he’d done to her.

“How long have you known?”

“About twenty minutes now.” He felt her stare. “Honest.”

“But you’re you. Shouldn’t you have, like, an extra sense or two devoted to perceiving things outside human parameters?”

“ _Two_?” He chortled. “Clara, you wound me. We recognize no fewer than eleven specified senses.”

“And none of them would’ve worked to tell me this sooner?”

“I said I possess eleven senses; I never said I use them all.”

“What’s the point in having a sense if you don’t use it? Seems a lot of brain going to waste.”

“If you think of a Time Lord’s brain more like a TARDIS, perhaps that would make it easier to understand.”

She scoffed. “Egomaniac.”

“I’m only trying to say that I find it more…stimulating to experience the world as you do, to solve the riddles of the universe with only my vast knowledge and five human-shared senses.”

“So you can boast of your triumphs over a self-imposed handicap.”

“So I can try to better understand a species that is capable of making such important choices and doing such good with such little evidence. Relatively speaking.”

“Oh.” She almost purred the word.

“And maybe the tiniest bit of boasting.”

She slapped his chest playfully, and they fell into a companionable silence. If the Doctor knew one thing about Clara Oswald, however, it was that no good silence went unbroken. He hadn’t even made it to ten in his head when he heard the little gasp that preceded her words.

“So, anything else supposed to happen during this Tremoring, aside from the obvious?”

In spite of it all, their current predicament, the fact that he didn’t have the foggiest idea as to how things would unfold in the coming months, the Doctor laughed.

“Would you believe me if I told you it’s exactly this?”

She smiled. “I think I might.”

“In the same way human women crave certain foods, Gallifreyan women develop a fierce desire to see particular worlds, to revisit pleasant sights. It’s traditionally viewed as a time of great bonding, even more so than the, uh, _act_ itself.” He felt her chuckle from within her blanketed cocoon, amused by his lingering embarrassment. “The couple is supposed to reflect on the beauty of the universe, that from the blackness and the cold could come something so strong and bright and pure—like a star in miniature.”

He noticed her shaking had subsided, and felt her snuggle sleepily against him.

“Never ceases to amaze…” she was mumbling through a yawn.

“We’re, um, also supposed to do other things.”

Her eyes flew back open at this. “Oh, really?” She put on her best sultry, not-completely-exhausted voice. “What other things, Doctor?”

“Well…” She could tell he was fighting the urge to fidget. “Things like deciding on names. Choosing a color scheme—colors hold strange meanings for us, you know—wondering if he or she will have Academy aspirations…”

She could feel him retreating inside himself then, could feel the current under his skin carrying him off to his memories, the last relics of his home world.

“Hey,” she said, bringing her hand up to rest on his cheek. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” His arm tightened around her waist in understanding and she nuzzled into his chest.

“Academy or not, I don’t think he or she could’ve chosen a better instructor.”

His cheek came to rest at the top of her head as he whispered, “You think so?”

“Mhm. I know so.”

They were quiet a moment, Clara nearly having drifted back to sleep, when she felt him lean into her hair.

“And, Clara…” His lips ghosted across the shell of her ear. “ _Those_ other things, too. The experience during this period is…singular.”

She grinned, knowing immediately what he meant, while simultaneously acknowledging she was far too tired to give anyone a good time, herself included.

He seemed to sense her exhaustion, mortification over his candidness leaving him sputtering random facts about the architecture of her building, the iron content in the spinach she loved so much. She silenced him with a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“So how long is this phase supposed to last?”

Her lips, still on his skin, buzzed as he gave a soft hum.

“It would usually bisect the gestation. In Earth time, seven months…ish?”

“Seven months—that’s _half_ the pregnancy?”

“I—I’m sure yours will be different. Probably shorter. Maybe. The little bug’s only half-Time Lord, so really it could be anywhere from nine to fourteen months.”

Clara should have been worrying about how to cope with a likely-year-long pregnancy; instead, she hadn’t listened much past the first part of his speech.

“You did not just call our child a ‘little bug’.”

“What? I think it’s rather…” He searched for the right word. “Cute.”

She yawned again, laying her head back against his chest. “I’m not convinced.”

“Well, maybe I could, uh, _convince_ you later.”

In her head, she could perfectly see his face trying to fight his embarrassment.

“I think I’d like to see you try. There’s still three days of spring holiday…”

She closed her eyes against the soothing rumble of his chuckle. “Is that a challenge, Clara Oswald?”

“And an invitation, Mighty Time Lord,” she sighed into his shirt, her brain hazy with sleep.

She was almost out when a nagging thought bubbled up to the surface of her mind.

“Doctor?”

“Hm?”

She knew his kind didn’t need rest as she did. He could be bouncing off the walls in only an hour or two. “Would you mind—if it’s not a bother—would you stay with me? When I wake up, I mean. I’m okay now, dunno how, but I am. But I’m afraid the world’ll start crashing around me the second I open my eyes.”

“Clara, Clara…” he murmured as he brought one of her hands to his lips, placing tiny kisses over her knuckles, palm, fingertips. “We’re in far too geologically-stable an area for that to happen. Besides, where else would I be?”

She went quiet as an idea formed in her mind, a devilish smirk soon appearing on her lips.

“I like _Dave_.”

“You—what?”

“As a name. Dave.”

“That is quite possibly the most boring name in the history of names in all the universe—and I once knew a sentient rock named Og. Our son—if he is a son—will absolutely, emphatically, categorically not be named Dave. How you could even think—”

Her resulting fit of giggles informed him he’d been had.

“That’s right, laugh, you clever little thing. Go on.” His hand began tracing patterns on her hip. “And here I thought you were tired.” He gave a light pinch to the skin beneath the thick blanket, chuckling at the squeak it earned him.

“No, I am. Deliriously tired. I’m just…happy. I should be freaking out right now, and I probably will be soon. Metaphoric world-crashing stuff. But this feels good.”

Then she felt his lips in her hair again—and maybe the tiniest dose of Time Lord sleep-aid—and let his twin heartbeats carry her off.


End file.
